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The Morning that felt Real
publish date:
2026-02-15 07:00:27Candice's P.O.V.
The sun came streaming through the hospital blinds in fine golden bars across the bed, and made stripes across the chest of Mantovani as the bandages just showed their heads through the open neck of his gown. I had seen those stripes go on--slow, tireless, measuring them out as they had to be they were evidence that time still had some course, that we were still alive at night. It ached in my back where I had just left the chair, it hurt my eyes because I had not slept
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Then Mantovani groaned, and lifting the lips that had been cracked, fluttered his eyelids, and gazed at me through green eyes, opaque with pain and morphine that met my eyes across the room. "Candice..." Something in me was struck by the sound of my name, weak, raspy, but alive, out of him, and I
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